DD 801 
.fl52 B3 
Copy 1 



ALSACE LORRAINE 



OR 



THE STRUGGLE of 2000 YEARS 



As Pointing t<> a New Basis 



for 



PEACE AMONG NATIONS 



By 
Charles 1 1. Barrows, LLB 



Pi inted f<>r Pit i ilation 

ut 

Tin P iiu I. \ l'.\ 

I9l9 



THE CHALLENGE 

The war has not been imposed upon us by others and by 
surprise. We have willed the war. It was our duty to will 
it. We decline to appear before a tribunal of united Europe. 
We reject its jurisdiction. One principle alone counts and no 
other — one principle which contains and shows up all the 
others — might. 

■ — Maximilian Harden, October, 1914 



THE REPLY 

When the truth of to-day's launchings percolates to the 
German people they will know that their leaders have deceived 
them; that Americans have their sleeve's rolled up and we 
have our fighting blood up; that we are going to win ^ v 
war if it takes the last man, the last ounce of strength, 
last resource and the last dollar that this country possesses. 

— Charles M. Schwab, July 4 1918. 



Republic free, thy Stars shall shine 

Where Freedom forms her battle-line, 

And light with hope the midnight sky, 

Till all shall see the dawn draw nigh 
Who Freedom's battle fight once more, 
As fought their gallant sires of yore. 

0, broad thy Stripes and bright thy Stars, 

And sweet thy life when prison bars 

Are gone, with tyrants overthrown, 

And nations come into their own; 

And Freedom needs her friends no more 
To fight as fought their sires of yore. 

— Tiplady; from "The Cross at the Front. 



Copyright, 1918, by Charles H. Barrows. 

AUG 17 IS/8 

GCI.A504191 



4i9 ( 






Alsace-Lorraine 

and 

Peace Among the Nations 



We seek a lasting peace; we seek it through war because only 
through a war of self defense and in maintenance of the fundamental 
rights of nations does such a peace seem possible. We seek a just, 
an honorable peace, in which wrongs shall be righted; conditions 
either restored or created under which for all time the warring 
nations can trust each other, deal with mutual respect and advan- 
tage, and no more rely on great armies, fleets of dreadnaughts, battle 
cruisers and such engines of death and destruction. These are 
world objects and in the official declarations of the President of the 
United States they have been given first place. The same may 
be said of the declarations of the Pope. This great, this universal 
objective, is to a greater or less extent, in view of all the nations; 
if not of their rulers, it at least has dawned or begins to dawn upon 
the masses. Cyclops may have but one eye but he can see that he 
ought not and need not sweat and tug forever under the burdens 
of war. 

The more universal the object, the greater it looms and the 
smaller in comparison becomes the great number of objects and 
ambitions of the nations that cluster around it and are in danger 
of beclouding it. These objects may be national in their scope; 
but we ascend into the commonwealth of nations and expect some 
attending sacrifices. Not without pain did the thirteen colonies 
yield some part of their independence to the United States and 
accept a limited sovereignty; but not without pain would they see 
their rights again restored. In no war known to history have the 
issues, the conflicting rights and national ambitions, been so numer- 
ous and, perhaps, so involved. It goes without saying that no settle- 
ment, permanent, satisfactory in the long run, and marking a decided 
advance in world politics, can be made without sacrifice on the part 
of some, and perhaps of all, the contending nations. Not a sacrifice 
of men and money; this now goes awfully on while the voices of the 
dead cry for a new earth. But among the things that go to the 
scrap heap, or ought to go, will be some political tenets, some na- 
tional ambitions, even some cherished ideals, along with some na- 



tional whims, fancies, and darling things possessed which are incon- 
sistent with the moral unity implied in a non-political or semi- 
political union of nations. At the end of every street fight there 
should be a forgive and forget; or at least the mutual sacrifice of 
some pocketed pride. It will probably be thus at the institution 
of any league of peace if its purposes are realized. 

To look at the matter in the concrete. 

First, as if moral discipline were attainable only by a great 
standing army with enormous armaments, as has been the case with 
Germany, consisting of recruits and reserves molded and directed 
by an oppressive militarism, a consciousless military machine, 

"a monster of so frightful mien 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen," 

the nations have yet to learn that to arm for self defense is right 
and to arm for conquest deserves the social and economical boycott 
of the civilized world. Every humane, christianly civilized person 
can join with Eucken in words spoken to a friend of the writer some 
years before the war, "We hate Prussian militarism" (" Wir hassen 
Prussien militarisms"). When this monster appears, breathing 
fire and belching poisonous gas, it is as much the duty of the civilized 
world to confine and crush it as for a village community to cage or 
kill a lion escaped from a menagerie. The safety of the world requires 
it and the world must be so adjusted to the legitimate aspirations 
of the nations that in a half-century Germany itself would have no 
regrets, even as the South does not today mourn the downfall of 
slavery. 

Again, as was said by Amos, professor of jurisprudence in Uni- 
versity College, London, in his "Political and Legal Remedies for 
War," (1880) "England is regarded as the stronghold of the doctrine 
which admits of the capture of private persons and property at sea, 
while disallowing it on land. Every European state, as well as the 
United States of America, has at one time or another, publicly 
advocated the opposite doctrine; or has adopted the principle of 
reciprocity, or has already afforded a precedent for exempting pri- 
vate property at sea from capture, as in the case of the war of 1866, 
between Austria and Prussia, in alliance with Italy and in the war 
of France and England with China, in i860. The most notable 
expression of the English view is that given by Lord Palmerston in 
i860 when he announced that, in his opinion, the existence of Eng- 
land depended upon the maintenance of her empire over the sea 
and the capture of the merchant ships and seamen of states with 
which she was at war was essential to this end." Thus "it is with 
good reason that England is regarded as the stronghold of the doc- 
trine which admits of the capture of private persons and property 
at sea, while disallowing it on land," and in a strong argument the 
author proceeds to contradict this view. In "Mare Liberum" 
(London, 1917) Ramsay Muir, professor of history in the University 



of Manchester, England, contrasting the German and American 
view, declares the American doctrine to be "simpler, bolder and 
more honest; and it is fair to say that it has been consistently main- 
tained by American publicists since 1783. It was that all private 
property, whether ship or cargoes, and whether enemy or belligerent, 
should be exempt from seizure or destruction; but that goods des- 
tined for a belligerent government should (if contraband, as such 
goods practically always are) be liable to seizure and confiscation. 
This is the American doctrine of freedom of the seas, which has 
been preached ardently by President Wilson. If the allies win it 
is likely that the British interpretation of the freedom of the seas 
will be established. As for the American view, it is unlikely to be 
adopted unless America is able to dictate terms of peace." In 
other words somebody has got to sacrifice something in the way 
of political principle for the sake of peace. Yet it may be said that 
if peace is of the kind sought by the League to enforce Peace, the 
sacrifice will not be so great after all. While Britain takes pride 
in her "command of the sea" no self-respecting American can listen 
with patience to Thomson's ditty, "Britannia rules the seas." So 
long as she does so upon the principles now maintained we must 
hope for her friendly disposition and in case of trouble be content 
to hide behind her skirts. 

Again, it is not likely that the Philippines will play any part 
in the peace settlement. Should they chance to do so, the United 
States cannot afford to disregard its pledges and principles. Nothing 
but foolish vanity is contained in the saying "Where the flag once 
goes up it shall never come down;" on the other hand if for power 
or pelf we abandon the principle of self government for the islands 
as soon as they can receive it, even with the turbulence through 
which our predecessors worked up to a balanced freedom, we deserve 
no stars in our flag. 

Again, and in the last place, seeking for concrete instances of 
possible yielding of assumed national rights for the good of all, and 
entering upon the chief purpose of this essay, we approach the age- 
long dispute over Alsace-Lorraine, which is not unlikely to be a 
very difficult question in the settlement. On nothing, apparently, is 
the national heart more set, either in France or Germany, than the 
getting or keeping of Alsace-Lorraine. President Wilson has offi- 
cially spoken of this matter as having disturbed the peace of Europe 
long before the present war. Inasmuch as France was the only 
nation concerning itself particularly with Alsace-Lorraine, except as 
Germany was bothered in its government and committed inexcusa- 
ble blunders in connection therewith, this amounts to saying that 
we have got into a war fomented by France and begun by Germany. 
This does not sound well but allowing for the other questions in- 
volved, there is truth in it. Nevertheless, our entrance, on entirely 
disconnected grounds, was both justifiable and inevitable. 

The question of Alsace-Lorraine plays so great a part in the 



causes of the war and is liable to play so great a part in its end that 
it is worth while to examine all the facts, and determine, each for 
himself, the comparative importance of this issue in its relation to 
the greater question of a peace on a new and true basis. From 
French utterances it would seem that the restoration of the provinces 
was a necessary condition of any peace; German utterances indicate 
that to give up the provinces would be an impossible dismember- 
ment of the empire. In a state paper the president has expressed 
his opinion that the wrong of Alsace-Lorraine must be righted. In 
just what the wrong consists and how it should be righted he has 
not fully explained. It is the purpose of this paper to lay out the 
facts, leaving conclusions to the reader. 

Ordinarily, in warfare, the so-called status quo ante, or condition 
of things as were at the beginning of the conflict, especially if settled 
by treaty, is taken as the starting point of a new peace. For the 
sake of quiet things must be considered as settled sometime and 
there is no statute of limitations in international law. The res 
judicata, the thing settled, dates from the fact. The status of Alsace- 
Lorraine was established by the treaty of Paris at the end of the 
Franco-Prussian war. On the one hand it is said that the 
treaty was signed under duress; on the other, that all treaties, 
after one party is vanquished, are made under duress, as, for example, 
the treaty following our own Revolution and that which ended our 
Mexican war. When a status is thus established it is not customary 
to go into past history. But in the Alsace-Lorraine issue, historical 
facts are invoked on both sides. France would go back a half century 
and undo a wrong; Germany went back, at the treaty of Paris, 
two centuries, claiming to undo another. Both sides would take us 
into history, most of it unfamiliar to the majority of people, either 
from observation or study. Therefore to history let us go, and 
start from the beginning; for the struggle for the Rhine valley is 
old and seems endless. 

And first as to Alsace, the flat and fertile Rhine-plain east of 
the Vosges mountains and extending from a point about opposite 
Basle in Switzerland northerly beyond Strasburg, which, with 
Mulhausen and Colmar, make its chief cities. We first know it as 
possessed by the Celt of whom there now remain the Welsh and 
the Irish. For all that we know their possession was hostile to some 
former race or tribes. Immigration into Europe from the Asian 
plains was by waves racially distinct from each other, a people 
generally spoken of as Iberians and perhaps represented in the 
Black Celts of Ireland and the people of the Basque province, prob- 
ably first; then the Celts, then the Teutons and after them the 
Slavs and Huns, each pushing the other forward and each wave 
often mingling its population with the one preceding. Many years 
intervened between the waves. How did the Celts lose Alsace? It 
was after the Teutons, to whom the name of Germani came to be 
applied by the Romans, had settled on the east bank of the Rhine. 



The Teutons seemed bent on moving west, pushed from behind by 
the Slavs. The Anglo-Saxon tribes crossed the narrow sea and 
drove back the Welsh from the good soil of England. Into Alsace 
the Germans came by invitation. Two Celtic tribes quarrelled and 
one of them asked Ariovistus, him of Caesar's Commentaries, to 
cross the Rhine and help. He came in full force and staid. Caesar 
describes him as savage, proud, cruel, exacting children as hostages, 
and using tortures. To us he might appear as a composite of Von 
Ludendorf, Von Hindenburg, Von Bissing, Von Dithfurth, Von 
Bomb, Von Teufel and all the other generals of the German army. 
The Rhine valley, especially the west part as well as all Gaul, by 
Caesar's victorious arms, now became a part of the Roman empire 
and what is now France so absorbed the Roman civilization, language 
and manners as to become permanently a Latin country. The 
Teutons of the Rhine plain, however, retained their racial character- 
istics, among which was a high spirit of individual freedom noted 
by Tacitus, but now apparently lost in the grinding machinery of 
autocracy. Although the Romans acquired and retained a domi- 
nance on the Rhine, they seem to have acquiesced in settlements 
of the Teutonic tribes on both sides of the river and to take these 
under a sort of protection. Their camps grew into cities and all 
went well so long as the empire itself remained strong. As it gradu- 
ally weakened, other tribes of Germans, perhaps pressed from behind, 
showed a disposition to cross the river. The Alamanni, themselves 
Teutonic, early in the fifth century crossed into Alsatia, which they 
conquered and settled. Although their sway was brief they so im- 
pressed themselves on the old Teutonic element of Ariovistus that 
the Alamannic dialect of German can still be traced in southern 
Alsatia. 

The year 476 marks the fall of the Roman empire except as far 
as it survived at Constantinople; and this marks the close of ancient 
and the beginning of mediaeval history. The struggle for the Rhine 
valley, which we have seen going on in Caesar's day, had now lasted 
five hundred years. 

The fall of the empire saw the numerous German tribes con- 
centrated into several loosely held confederations of which the only 
one of importance here is the confederation of the Franks. The 
Franks were settled on the lower Rhine as far as the Netherlands 
and the North Sea. In this way do they describe their own character 
in the introduction to the Salic law, formulated by the leading tribe, 
the Salian Franks. "The high famed nation of the Franks, who have 
God for their judge, are brave in war, profound in council, firm in 
union, manly in form, bold, prompt, firm; such is the nation, which, 
small in number, by strength and courage, broke the yoke of the 
Romans." They not only broke the yoke, but even before the fall 
of the empire they warred and plundered through Roman Gaul and 
even conquered Tarragona, in Spain. Nevertheless, both Roman 
and Frank, Latin and Teuton, had united their forces in 451, to 



meet the invading hosts of Attila, the Hun, the self styled "scourge 
of God." On the plain of the Marne, by the defeat of Attila, it was 
settled that Germany and France, Spain, and, it may be Great 
Britain, should not become Mongolian, but that Latin and Teuton 
should divide the land, the Celts having already been crowded into 
mountainous corners. The common danger having passed and 
Roman legions once more and forever withdrawn from Gaul, new 
forces of immigration and conquest were released. We have seen 
Alsatia become Teutonic in place of Celt and so it is wholly to re- 
main, both in its political connections and racial character, until 
almost our own time. For a thousand years there will be occasional 
political changes and affiliations, but they will be inter-Germanic. 
We will therefore pass to Lorraine. 

Lorraine, as a province of France before the war of 1870, may 
be roughly defined as consisting of the valleys of the Moselle and 
Meuse, so far as the same lie south of Luxembourg and Belgium. 
It included the strong fortresses of Metz and Verdun and the cities 
of Nancy, Toul and St. Mihiel. Between it and the Rhine lay the 
French province of Alsace. In a general way these were the limits 
of Lorraine, as known in mediaeval history. Taking up the history 
at the earliest point, it was probably about the sixth century that 
those Celts called Belgae by Caesar but not distinguished by him 
as Celts, migrated from central Europe and settled themselves in 
this region. Caesar's conquests made them a part of the Roman 
province of Gaul. Here they would have gradually absorbed Roman 
civilization, and doubtless did so, in a degree, but a new enemy 
appeared. The Franks were moving west and in the third century 
were repulsed once and again by the Roman legions. In 357, the 
year following the great battle of Strasburg, in which Julian, after- 
wards emperor, defeated the Alamanni, who had destroyed the 
fortifications of the Rhine, he subdued the Salian Franks. These 
were settled in Toxandria, the country between the Meuse and the 
Scheldt, but were breaking further into Gaul. 

In Toxandria he allowed them to remain, becoming tributary 
and furnishing soldiers to the Roman army. They were fairly well 
kept under until the fall of the empire after which they poured 
themselves over Gaul, by force uniting with themselves the Ala- 
manni, and Ripuarian Franks who dwelt in the valleys of the Rhine 
and Moselle. Their great champion was Clovis and at his death or 
soon after, the kingdom of the Franks stretched over Gaul from 
Cologne to the present border of Spain. These were the fruits of 
conquest; what of the conquerors? "Although they were strongly 
attracted by the allurements of rapine," says Gibbon, "they pro- 
fessed a distinguished love of war which they considered as the 
supreme honor and felicity of human nature." Writing of Clovis 
and his line of Frank-German kings, Kohlrausch, the German his- 
torian, says that they were marked by vice, tyranny, cruelty and 
savage revenge and that the Franks of their day could not pos- 



sibly be raised from their state of moral rudeness and degrada- 
tion. 

These were the "Dark Ages" so called; but now there broke a 
great light upon the world in the person of Charlemagne, or Karl 
the Great. Great in body, great in mind and great in soul, according 
to the measure of the age, the object of his life was to unite the 
Christian Germanic nations into one empire and even further to 
extend the benefits and peaceful influence of the Christian faith. 
In this he succeeded; but it was only by constant vigilance in re- 
pressing the predatory Saxons, the plundering Mongolians in Hun- 
gary, the quarrelsome elements in Italy. He promoted scholarship, 
fostered the churches, ruled with justice and, like Alfred the Great, 
studied the manuscripts and collated the texts of the Bible. At his 
death he ruled Central Europe from Spain to Hungary and also 
Italy. 

"As the reorganizer of Europe," says one of his English biog- 
raphers, "Charles claims a place among the world-heroes; in him 
are incarnated that spirit of order and that solicitude for the general 
welfare by which true statesmen may invariably be known." When 
Charles folded his hands upon his breast and murmured in broken 
accents, "Lord, into thy hands I commit my spirit," he left the 
world in the clear consciousness that he had done for it all that lay 
in his great power to do. He had even made provision for the conduct 
of its affairs after his death. Having three sons he knew that there 
would be strife and disorder if it were left to one to reign. The three 
together had not his own ability. He therefore made a division of 
the empire among them before his death, retaining the actual power 
while he lived. It is the manner in which he made the division 
and the reasons for it in which we are interested. We* must admit 
that for such a man, who charged his sons to love the people as if 
they were their children and, after his defensive wars were over, 
gloried in the title of "The Pacific," purely dynastic, capricious or 
arbitrary reasons could not have been controlling. To one son was 
given Italy, to another that part of Gaul, with its capital at Paris, 
which the German element had not assimilated, nor was likely to 
assimilate with the old population. Louis, the eldest, received the 
real Frankland, land settled by Franks and in which they probably 
seemed to Charles to have their natural home. A part of this was 
on the east bank of the Rhine, Franconia, the old home of the Franks; 
part consisted of the valleys of the Rhine, Moselle and the Meuse, 
in which Roman civilization and the Latin language had to a certain 
extent disappeared. Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) was the capitol and 
within these limits were Alsace and Lorraine. This division of the 
empire is entitled to great respect as that of one whose ability as a 
warrior was excelled by his genius as an organizer. The division 
was defeated by the death of two sons before that of the emperor 
and the descent of the whole fell upon Louis the Pious. Louis was 
no sooner dead than his sons, Lothaire, Louis and Charles, disputed 



the realm between them. A terrible battle resulted in the treaty 
of Verdun, which is reckoned one of the important events in history. 
By it Germany pure and simple, unmixed with other blood, and 
lying east of the Rhine, except Mayence, Spires and Worms, went 
to Louis; France, pure and simple, that is to say, Romanized Gaul, 
went to Charles the Bald, ruler of Burgundy, and between these the 
territory settled by the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, was given to 
Lothaire, with other land that made his kingdom stretch from 
Italy to the North Sea. Part of this kingdom became known as 
Lotharingia (Lorraine), and included, besides Holland and Fries- 
land, also Alsace and Lorraine, as now known, the cities of Stras- 
burg, Metz, Toul and Verdun, with the capital at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
The retirement of Lothaire into a convent precipitated a struggle 
between his nephews for his kingdom, which resulted in the treaty 
of Mersen, considered by some as more important than that of 
Verdun. At all events it seems to have met with general acquiescence. 
It drew pretty accurately the natural line between Latin and Teuton; 
and it made a cleavage between the two languages. For the present 
purpose it is enough to say that, conforming to the plans of Charle- 
magne and the treaty of 843, it gave Alsace, as ever, to Germany, 
as also the valleys of the Moselle and the Meuse. 

But soon there came a radical change in the political order. 
Kings weakened and kingdoms decayed; nay, kingdoms ignomin- 
iously broke up into unorganized parts. The feudal system arises, 
in which the noble in his strong castle, with his retainers and serfs, 
can defy the central authority. Counties and dukedoms remain but 
the counts and dukes are independent of the original appointing 
power. If they became too oppressive of their neighbors, the guilds 
in the towns, combined, fought and obtained freedom. Thus did 
Strasburg, and acknowledged allegiance to the waning authority of 
the emperor, whoever he might be, chosen by the seven electors of 
Germany. The kings of France were defied by the nobles; Germany 
dissolved into several hundred fragments — duchies, countships, free 
cities, ecclesiastical principalities, — and the kingdom of Lotharingia 
went to pieces. For centuries thereafter we read of dukes of Lor- 
raine, independent and acting with this political unit or that as 
interest for the time dictated. Little more than this can be said, 
especially of Alsace and Lorraine, until we reach the fifteenth cen- 
tury, and then there appeared an illustrious character who brought 
both these provinces, as well as the free imperial cities contained 
within their boundaries, into great prominence. This character was 
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy and Count of Flanders. Bur- 
gundy corresponds roughly to southeastern France and its dukes, 
getting a foothold by a certain matrimonial alliance, had gradually 
acquired an ascendency in Flanders, clinched after the rebellion of 
Liege and Dinant against their power, by the terrible retribution 
inflicted on those municipalities by Charles. Flanders and Burgundy 
together, in his view, would make a powerful kingdom, a buffer state 

10 



between France and Germany, if they could but be tied together 
by the acquisition of Lorraine. To this purpose he put himself, 
and had he succeeded there would have been a sort of new Lothar- 
ingia. In aid of this object he prosecuted designs also in Alsace. 
Great was the opposition, for both the provinces and the imperial 
cities had come to enjoy the freedom which they had under the 
feudal system. Nancy, Metz, Strasburg, Mulhausen, Colmar, were 
not to be had for the asking; and if they were, there was another, 
as resourceful, if not in arms, at least in plot and cunning, who had 
his eye on them. This was Louis XI of France, to whom it had 
been suggested when dauphin, that the natural boundary of France 
was the Rhine. So the valley of the Rhine and its tributaries again 
take their place in the course of history as "the tilting ground of 
nations." 

Charles had no luck in Alsace, which was German to the core, 
and, although he held possession for a time under a mortgage, pre- 
ferred alliances with the house of Austria or the Swiss Republic, 
Basel and Strasburg acting together in these matters. However, 
Lorraine was conquered, but held only for a time, after which it 
went to its own Duke, Rene of Provence. The duchy preferred 
Rene; the cities, their freedom under the empire. Yet there were 
elements that made the duchy gravitate towards France rather than 
the empire. Kirk, in his life of Charles, says that the people were 
mostly French and many of the nobility were of French extraction. 
Taking any plebiscite either before the Franco-Prussian war or after 
one cannot but notice the difference in nomenclature between Alsace 
and Lorraine. In Alsace, — Strasburg, Mulhausen, Colmar, Schlett- 
stadt, Thann, Ensisheim, all ancient and Teutonic; in Lorraine,— 
Nancy, Epinal, Toul, Remiremont, Mirecourt, all Romance. Verdun 
and Metz are in contrast, the one a Romance modification of the 
Roman name, the other having a Teutonic form of the original 
Roman. When the line was drawn in 187 1, it was between Metz 
and Verdun, and up to the present time a holocaust of human lives 
has not altered it. Yet Lorraine belonged to the kingdom of the 
Franks; Franks settled in it; it was reckoned an important part of 
the middle kingdom by Charlemagne; but in contrast with the 
countries lower down the valley of the Rhine and its affluents the 
absorbing form of civilization was Latin rather than Teutonic. Kirk 
describes Alsace at this period as almost entirely Teutonic, which 
may explain why Louis XI was so willing to give it over to the horrors 
of pillage and plunder after a pitiful attempt on the liberties of the 
Swiss. 

From the death of Charles the Bold in 1477 we pass to the 
reign of Henry II of France and his war with the Emperor Charles V, 
begun in 1552. Great was the rivalry for power between the emperor 
and the king. The emperor, finding in Protestantism a danger to 
an autocratic throne, the Protestant princes of Germany sought the 
aid of Henry. He, having some reasons to think that Charles had 

11 



designs on three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, proceeded to 
seize them himself; also Pont-a-Mousson, and then turned a greedy 
eye on Strasburg. Strasburg was impossible, but in the peace that 
followed the war France kept Metz, Toul, and Verdun. The sur- 
render of the last two cities and the incidents in the siege of the 
first, indicate that these cities gravitated toward France rather than 
toward the empire, in which Spain, hated and feared, was now the 
predominant partner. 

When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five propositions on the 
church door at Wittenberg in 15 17, he precipitated a crisis, which, 
extending from the field of religion to that of political controversy 
started, in 1617, the Thirty Years War, which tore Germany 
from end to end and left a wreck from which recovery was slow. 
At first, great warriors were on the scene of battle, — Gustavus 
Adolphus, Wallenstein, Tilly. They died before the end and other 
men succeeded. One of these was Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, de- 
scribed by Schiller in one of those exquisite character sketches that 
illuminate his history of this war. Without the disinterested ideals 
of Gustavus, or any particular loyalty to Germany as a whole, he 
sought in the old spirit of feudalism for new power for himself on 
the Rhine and, expecting to make Breisach his capital, besieged and 
took that fortress town and had the provinces pretty well in his 
power. But he was playing into the hands of a man far greater than 
himself, whose master mind had been known for years in the di- 
plomacy of Europe. Bernard suddenly died and, although he be- 
queathed Breisach and Alsace to his brother, together with his 
army, French money bought over the army and to France by the 
peace went most of the fruits of Bernard's conquests. Breisach, 
on the east bank of the Rhine, called "the key" to Germany, was, 
as said by a German writer, "conquered for the French by the valor 
of German troops" and this through the statecraft of Richelieu 
who, far from wishing for pacification, inasmuch as the war made 
France an indispensable ally and the hostile views of its public 
policy were promoted by seeing Germany cut to pieces by its own 
people as- well as foreigners. (Kohlrausch, History of Germany). 

The war ended at last, after thirty years of bloodshed and pil- 
lage, by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. By its terms the Nether- 
lands were lost to the empire, for Spain was compelled to acknowl- 
edge their independence and the emperor to relinquish his right of 
fealty. Flanders, the Frankland of Charlemagne, was free, but not 
free from fear. From Germany, France, which had mixed in the 
war of religious dissension among the German states, and as a 
Catholic power forwarded the interests of the Protestant states 
merely for her own purposes, demanded enormous sacrifices. She 
had the upper hand and prevailed. Her right to Metz, Toul, and 
Verdun, which she had really enjoyed since 1552 was recognized. 
She was given the fortress of Breisach, upper and lower Alsace, 
the Sundgau, the right to garrison Philipsburg on the Rhine, and 



the right of advocacy of the ten free imperial cities of Alsace, — not 
their possession or government. The natural feeling in Germany 
over this humiliating peace was thus expressed by a contemporary, 
quoted by Kohlrausch: "On the same soil where, in former times, 
our noble ancestors hurled defiance against the insolent Varus and 
his legions we are now doomed to behold foreigners without arms 
insult us and triumph over Germania. They summon us, and we 
humbly obey the call; they speak, and we listen with humility and 
attention as to an oracle; they promise, and we place faith in them 
as in God; they menace us, and we tremble like slaves. A sheet of 
paper filled up by a woman, whether at Paris or Stockholm, makes 
the whole Germanic empire tremble or rejoice. They already, in 
the very heart of Germany, discuss and dispute together over Ger- 
many, as to what they shall take from, and what they shall conde- 
scend to leave us; what feathers they shall pluck from the Roman 
eagle and therewith decorate the Gallic cock. And we ourselves, 
divided continually among each other, abandon our tutelary divinity 
for the idols of foreign nations, — to whom we sacrifice life, liberty, 

V~.nd honor." 
Thus far we have seen remarkable men influencing the disposi- 
tion and destiny of Alsace-Lorraine, in the seemingly endless struggle 
between the Latin and the Teuton over this fertile and lovely region, 
— Julius Caesar, the Emperor Julian, sometimes called the Apostate, 
Charlemagne, Charles the Bold, Louis XI, Charles V, and Richelieu. a 
Before reaching the events making history in this present war, three 
remarkable men are to follow, of whom the first is Louis XIV, 
sometimes denominated Le Grand Monarque. His proper soubriquet 
is Le Grand Voleur, for, besides robbing his neighbors of their terri- 
tories he robbed Europe of peace, his exchequer of resources, French 
industry, by revoking the Edict of Nantes, of a precious element, 
the French people of prosperity and, so far as a conscienceless king 
and corrupt court could do it, France of her virtue. In two scathing 
chapters and with ill concealed contempt, the public character of 
Louis has been held up to scorn by the publicist, Guizot, whose 
ability as a historian was only equalled by his high moral standards 
as a man. Enlargement of the territory of France by war, just or 
unjust, was the ruling foreign policy of Louis. On any slight pre- 
tence hostilities followed wherever self-interest led the way. His 
own words in his memoirs disclose "the nature of the beast." "The 
revolutions I had in my mind seemed to me very worthy of execu- 
tion; my natural activity, the ardor of my age, and the violent 
desire I felt to augment my reputation, made me very impatient to 
be up and doing; but I found at this time that the love of glory has 
the same niceties as the most tender passions. I was in full enjoy- 
ment of my good fortune and the fruits of my good conduct, which 
had caused me to profit by all the occasions I had met with for en- 
larging the boundaries of my kingdom at the expense of my ene- 
mies." He coveted Flanders but the free republic of Holland stood 

13 



in the way; therefore war with Holland, defended by William of 
Orange, backed by England. 

Incidently, in 1675, he entered Lorraine. The whole duchy 
was reduced and the duke made a fugitive. "In 168 1," says the 
editor of the Encyclopedia Brittannica, "during a time of peace, he 
suddenly seized Strasburg and this unjustifiable action received for- 
mal recognition at the peace of Ryswick in 1697." Thus did he 
lay a fuse, that, slowly burning, has for the second time blazed up 
in war, in 1914. Speaking somewhat in hyperbole, Ruskin said at 
the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War that Louis Napoleon had 
no more to do with its causes than a cork on the top of a wave with 
the toss of the sea. As in the western migration of the nations 
already described, the propelling force is far behind, the one in 
place, the other in time. Cressey, in his "Decisive Battles of the 
World," says that Louis "stole" Strasburg and, describing the 
events leading up to the battle of Blenheim, which redeemed Europe 
from what Guizot calls "the yoke of Louis XIV," uses this language: 
— "Though the court of England submitted to abet the usurpations 
of France, and the king of England stooped to be her pensioner, the 
crime was not national. On the contrary, the nation cried out loudly 
against it, even while it was committing." Guizot does not claim as 
much for his own country, but writes: "Louis XIV had led France 
on to the brink of a precipice and he had in turn been led by her; 
king and people had given themselves up unreservedly to the passion 
for glory and the intoxication of success." "I loved war too much" 
was the death-bed confession of Louis XIV. It was in the final 
settlement after Louis' war of the Spanish succession which gave 
Strasburg to the French crown, that the conquest of Gibraltar by 
England was ratified and confirmed. This was of course humiliating 
to Spain, which made many efforts to reconquer it. It sustained in 
1782 a continuous siege during which the rocky galleries devised by 
the English prefigured the trenches of recent warfare and their newly 
invented device of redhot shot suggests the gas and liquid fire of the 
present contest. Whether Gibraltar, a fortress held seemingly against 
the course of nature by one power within the territory of another, 
will prove such an everlasting source of international embarrassment 
in war as Alsace-Lorraine has been, remains to be seen. A great 
deal depends on the good sense, patience, and existing temper of the 
power that holds it and which has for a century been the power that 
held the hegemony of Europe. 

We have seen Alsace and the free city of Strasburg lost to their 
semi-independence and to the German empire. It was in the fol- 
lowing reign, of Louis XV, that the destiny of Lorraine was settled 
for a century and more. It came about in this way, Stanislaus, 
an able man and popular sovereign, had been king of Poland. The 
downfall of his protector, Charles XII of Sweden and the ensuing 
dominance of Russia in the affairs of Poland, had made him an 
exile. Meanwhile, a certain count and a certain madame, attached 

14 



to the French court, had brought about a marriage between the 
young king, Louis XV, and the daughter of Poland's late king. 
The reigning king of Poland, placed by Russia and Austria, now 
died and Louis naturally espoused the reinstatement of his father- 
in-law. The latter had no great desire to return, but the loud call 
from the Polish people seemed to make it his duty. Russia and 
Austria resisted and France was soon in the fray. The result was 
the treaty of Vienna in 1738 in which, as Guizot writes, "Duke 
Francis of Lorraine ceded the duchies of Lorraine and Bar (in which 
last is the city of Bar-le-Duc) to king Stanislaus, and the latter for- 
mally renounced the throne of Poland. After his death, Lorraine 
and the Barrois were to be united to the crown of France, as dower 
and heritage of that queen who had been but lately raised to the 
throne by a base intrigue and who thus secured to her new country 
a province so often taken and retaken, an object of so many treaties 
and negotiations, and tenderly cherished by France." Thus another 
V fuse was laid to blaze up in 1870 and 1914. 
V~ From the time of Louis XV to that of Napoleon history has al- 
mostnothing to say of Alsace and Lorraine and even in Napoleon's day, 
very little. France was strengthening herself in the provinces which 
disunited Germany was too weak to reclaim. It has been asserted 
that Louis XIV proceeded to "Frenchify" the provinces and, even 
if he made no direct efforts to this end, it would naturally follow 
that French capital and people would flow in,, just as the German 
element reinforced those regions after 1870^ Seeley, in his life of 
Stein, referring to the era of Napoleon, says that "those populations 
had been French so long that no one thought of them any longer 
as subject to a foreign tyranny." One of Stein's own letters speaks 
of the rural Lorrainers as breaking out in insurrection against his 
administration during his temporary government of territory occu- 
pied by the allies in the wars with Napoleon and in a letter to Lord 
Castlereagh he couples Alsace and Lorraine as rather favoring 
Napoleon than the allies. This feeling, as regards Alsace, probably 
had its origin in the fact that in 1617 the Austrian archdukes made 
over their rights in this duchy to the Spanish branch of their house 
and the Spanish regime was more hated than the French. The 
German empire, in its weakness, was helpless to defend and this 
threw them into the arms of France as the only protection from the 
stronger powers. Another reason is found in the religious dissensions. 
Before the robberies of Louis XIV the Reformation had practically 
secured the whole of Alsace. The result of Bourbon domination is 
thus described by an English writer in the Contemporary Review for 
July 1894: — "Economically, Alsace had good reason to be grateful 
to the French regime: the cultivation of the vine and of tobacco 
was carefully fostered by the French government. But, without 
violent persecution, a steady relentless war was made against the 
Protestant faith, and, by the time the Revolution came the bulk 
of the population had been won back to Catholicism. No one 

15 



rejoiced more in the era of civil and religious liberty that seemed to 
be dawning in 1789 than did the Protestant inhabitants of Stras- 
burg; but the noblest and best of them perished on the guillotine 
in 1794." The varied change in the character and preferences of the 
population is illustrated in the case of Mulhausen, at a somewhat 
later time. Mulhausen at the time of the Franco-Prussian war 
was more bitter against the Germans than any spot in Alsace, but 
when it yielded its independence and came into the kingdom of 
France in 1798 many families left it rather than change their na- 
tionality. The writer last quoted, referring to the effect of the French 
revolution, says: — "As a matter of fact, Strasburg and, to a great 
extent, Alsace, remained essentially German in language, culture, 
and sentiment, until the principles of 1789 and the victories of the 
empire awoke a strong French patriotic sentiment. Kleber, Keller- 
mann, and Rapp were Alsatians, and Marshall Ney was the son 
of a miner at Saarbrucken. It was a terrible blow to the young 
heroes of the war of liberation when the determined opposition of 
Russia prevented Alsace and Lorraine from being re-incorporated 
with Germany." 

The expatriation of a people, whether forced or semi-voluntary, 
such as happened on the Rhine after the conquests of Louis and 
again, in the 70's after those of William I of Germany, naturally 
excites pity, even after years are gone, and the events appear only 
as we unroll the scroll of history. Upon such an occurrence Long- 
fellow built the story of Evangeline and our feeling of sympathy 
and helpfulness for the American Indian may result in part from the 
forcible transfer of the civilized Cherokees from their old homes in 
Georgia to the wild plains of the territory,- — the republic atoning 
for its past. Sometimes such an expatriation has been big with un- 
foreseen results. An early example is the removal of the Jews by 
their conquerors to Babylon, by which the whole race, so far as it 
returned to Palestine, was saved from absorption with its captors, 
was purged of dross and became a religious stock, unsurpassed before 
or since; — the stem from which Christianity has sprouted. A later 
example is that of the Puritan settlers, ostracized, persecuted, and 
then self-exiled in the bleak climate of New England, becoming 
"God's young plantation in the virgin West." The revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes was a godsend to the industrial progress of 
England and the evil of autocracy dominating Germany in 1848, 
as it does today, gave to the United States a virile element in its 
population, an element which shone forth in Schurz, Siegel, Lieber, 
and Follen, and does at this day in Bamberger, Kahn, Scherer, 
Schwab, and others. 

Napoleon now arises on the wave of the Revolution only to 
sink again in the mire of self-seeking. He organized the Rhenish 
confederation but it had no particular effect on Alsace-Lorraine. 
He menaced England, conquered Spain, controlled Italy, and wiped 
his feet on Prussia and the other German states that did not ally 

16 



themselves with him. He by fear and Stein by foresight are largely 
the creators of Prussian strength and pride. He turned the Revolu- 
tion to his private purposes and an American standing by his mag- 
nificent tomb might wonder where is America's mausoleum to Aaron 
Burr. Napoleon stood in reverence at the tomb of Frederick the 
Great. Americans also stand there; but for any reverence they might 
feel there is in order of a sense of gratitude that their own country 
has not produced the like. The Napoleonic cult of power has been 
a mischief to France and today inspires the military party of Ger- 
many. The difference between France and England is somewhat 
the difference between the "Glory" that stirred Louis XIV and 
occurs so often in Napoleon's addresses to his troops and the "Eng- 
land expects that every man will do his duty" that spelt victory at 
Trafalgar. Louis IX and Henry of Navarre seem forgotten and the two 
royal robbers remembered. The relieving tint is the aureole that 
still lingers around the head of the Maid of Lorraine. One of her 
memorials is destroyed, perhaps through the negligence of the 
French in allowing its town to become of military importance; at 
all events by the bad marksmanship (or worse) of the Germans. 
The destruction at Rheims and the brutal indifference to the world's 
great treasures kept for the posterity of all the nations alike, German 
as well as French, shown by the language of General Von Dithfurth, 
would seem to indicate that in utter indifference to posterity the 
German generals would even sterilize the young of Germany if they 
could thereby score even temporary success in arms. 

The treaties which concluded the Napoleonic wars left the 
countries territorially about as they were before. The contracting 
parties, so far as their sovereigns were concerned, had been trembling 
for their thrones, and dynasties of course had to be preserved, even 
if peoples were forgotten. The struggle over presen't injuries had 
been too long and too severe to allow of any attempt to right old 
wrongs, if any there were. France retired to her former boundaries, 
keeping and presumably Latinizing Alsace-Lorraine; England con- 
tinued in her old and present policy of picking up plums wherever 
any were to be had on the surface of the globe, always with a keen 
eye on the Mediterranean as the highway to the east. Gibraltar, 
of course, which to a Spaniard seems a precious vital from Spain 
"untimely ripped," was the gem of England's possessions in defense 
of her Mediterranean trade route, and having been British for a 
century no question seems to have been seriously raised as to the 
continuance of the same sovereignty. "It was taken," says Captain 
Anderson in the Encyclopedia Brittannica, "by the allied British 
and Dutch forces on the 24th of July, 1704. The capture was made, 
as the war was being fought, in the interests of Charles, archduke of 
Austria, but George Rooke, the British admiral, on his own respon- 
sibility, caused the British flag to be hoisted, and took possession 
in the name of Queen Anne, whose government ratified the occupa- 
tion. A great number of the inhabitants of the town of Gibraltar 

17 



abandoned their homes rather than recognize the authority of the 
invaders." In the wars with Napoleon, the plum that fell to Great 
Britain was Malta. The treaty of Amiens (1802) had stipulated for 
the return of this island, captured by the British, to a neutral power. 
Napoleon fulfilled his part of the treaty, but backed by the Maltese, 
who disliked French influence, "England," in the words of the 
Encyclopedia just quoted, "actually renewed war with France, 
sooner than give up Malta," and the occupation was confirmed in 
the second treaty of Paris (1814). Fox protested that to break a 
solemn engagement, to retain Malta, would be an unworthy breach 
of faith which would compromise the honor of Britain." When in 
1878, as the result of Russia's war with Turkey, which came near 
driving the Turks out of Europe, the diplomacy of Beaconsfield in 
preventing it was rewarded with Cyprus without the unsheathing 
of a sword, for it rained larks in Britain then. The Boer War, how- 
ever, after The Jameson raid, cost some blood. Alongside it all is 
the two power fleet and the increasing jealousy of nations. But this 
much may be said for Britain, if she rules the seas and the shores 
they bound, her rule is more benign than would be that of any nation 
except this, to which, after the declared and adhered-to policy re- 
garding Cuba and the Philippines, no great power has, in its inter- 
national standards, as yet attained. The natural feeling of many 
Americans towards England, so often voiced in the last few years, 
had already been expressed by one of our own poets: 

To England; At Gibraltar 

Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas 

Between the East and West, that God has built; 
Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, 

While run thy armies true with his decrees; 

Law, justice, liberty — great gifts are these; 

Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, 
Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt, 

The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease. 

Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite, 

Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one 
Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. 

American I am; would wars were done. 
Now westward, look, my country bids goodnight — 

Peace to the world from ports without a gun. 

WOODBERRY, 189O. 

From the Congress of Vienna to the Franco-Prussian war is 
a period of fifty-five years. Had France been wisely governed during 
this period perhaps there might not have been a Franco-Prussian 
war. But amid the turmoils of a nation floundering about in the 

18 



troubles that naturally attend upon trying self-government after 
ages of oppression, she allowed herself to be led in a wild dance for 
glory by an adventurer, the nephew of Napoleon. Meanwhile Prus- 
sia had come under the leadership of Bismarck. Bismarck saw, or 
thought he saw, the necessity for three wars. These he brought to 
pass in his own way and time. The Schleswig-Holstein War, which 
turned on the conflicting claims of Denmark and Germany to the 
succession of a duchy, does not concern us; but its fruits were the 
harbor of Kiel and the Kiel Canal. The Congress of Vienna had 
left the German states, now reduced from 300 to 38, in a loose con- 
federation in which Austria was the "predominant partner," and so 
effectually and offensively predominant, as felt by Bismarck, that 
she must, in the interest of Prussia, be shaken out of the confederation. 
The victory of Sadowa ended a seven weeks war in which Austria 
was defeated, her allies among the German states crushed, and 
Prussia received large accessions of territory, particularly in the 
region of the Rhine, deducted by Prussia from the territory of Aus- 
tria's allies. The last war in which Bismarck engaged and the last 
that he advocated, was that waged with France in 1870. The issues 
of this war have so direct a bearing on one of the much mentioned 
phases of the present contest that a careful study of its origin is 
worth while. 

Of course, like most great events, its roots were historical. 
Said Ranke to Thiers at Versailles, — one historian to another, — 
"Germany is fighting Louis XIV." Ruskin's contemporary com- 
ment has already been quoted. As to the immediate causes, aside 
from Prussia's willingness to expand at the expense of her neigh- 
bors, even German neighbors, and the devotion of France to some- 
thing called "glory" as distinct from sober government, two views 
may be presented, one French and the other American. The first 
is to be found in a small book in the French language used in this 
country as a textbook, "Recit et Contes de la Guerre de 1870" edited 
by Mary Stone Bruce (Henry Holt & Co.). The quotation is taken 
from an abridgment of "The War of 1870-71" by General Niox, 
Governor of the Invalides, who reviewed the manuscript of the abridg- 
ment. A translation of a certain paragraph would read as follows: 
"In i860 war broke out between these two powers (Prussia and 
Austria). Most of the states of Germany sided with Austria. Italy 
was the ally of Prussia. The great victory of Sadowa resulted in a 
peace; Prussia, victorious, imposed her will on the rest of Germany. 
The French emperor, Napoleon III, took no part in this war. Bis- 
marck had been assured of his neutrality in leaving him falsely to 
hope that for compensation for the aggrandisement that Prussia 
would obtain, France could acquire some country on the left bank 
of the Rhine. After Sadowa, Bismarck changed his tune and the 
relations between France and Prussia became strained. It was fore- 
seen that, soon or late, war would break out between them. France 
awaited an occasion and Prussia found it. Ever since 1866 war was 

19 



inevitable between France and Prussia. France could not see with- 
out displeasure the development of the Prussian power. To this 
discontent was united, in bringing on the war, the conviction of her 
military superiority." After stating that Bismarck wished a war in 
order to unite the German states in a common enterprise; that 
Prussia had a good king ("un bon roi"), a great general, a minister 
of genius and a large and well-disciplined army, while France, en- 
tirely unprepared for war, was governed by "a sick man and a 
visionary," the narrative continues: "In 1870 the crown of Spain 
had been offered to a prince of Hohenzollern related to the royal 
family of Prussia. The government of Napoleon was alarmed at 
this candidature and demanded its withdrawal. The prince con- 
sented to retire, and the king of Prussia approved; but the Duke 
de Gramont, Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs, desired to exact 
a guaranty for the future. The Prussian king refused to guaranty 
the future." Showing how Bismarck needlessly, except for his pur- 
pose of forcing the issue, put together two telegrams from the king 
in such a way as to stir up France, the author concludes: "When 
the German despatch" (from Ems, where the king was, to Berlin) 
"was communicated" (in the form given to the press by Bismarck) 
"to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, there was an explosion 
of wrath. Thiers, great statesman that he was, spoke in vain in 
favor of peace. War was declared by France July 17, 1870." Bis- 
marck's comment on his own device was, "This will be a red rag 
to the Gallic bull." 

The military successes of Napoleon III in Italy and certain 
other things more showy than solid had made him popular at home, 
and in 1869 France had indorsed him and the continuance of his 
dynasty by an overwhelming vote. In his enfeebled condition he 
may have been less eager for war than the representatives of the 
people. He was then at the summit of his fame but, as the Prussian 
chancellor well knew, had passed the zenith of his real power. In 
fact, Bismarck never saw in him anything more than "a great, un- 
recognized Incapacity." An interesting view of the situation is 
given by one well qualified to judge by his own connection with 
foreign affairs in continental Europe, Andrew D. White, formerly 
president of Cornell University and American ambassador to Ger- 
many in the years 1 879-1 881. The following extracts are from his 
"Seven Great Statesmen," and the connecting narrative may be 
inferred. "The question now was — will this supreme potentate, 
Napoleon III, allow a united Germany on the borders of France 
and, if so, at what price? He had permitted various states of Italy 
to unite; indeed, he had sent his armies to aid them, but he exacted 
in return the cession of Nice and Savoy from Cavour. What cession 
of territory would he now demand from Bismarck? This question, 
and others grouped around it, Bismarck had studied for ten years, 
taking pains at various times to meet the French emperor and to 
discuss burning questions with him. Gradually Bismarck's frank- 

20 



ness invited something like similar on the emperor's part; his dreams 
for the future were now largely revealed, and all these might be 
summed up in one statement, — "France must extend her boundaries 
to the Rhine." Bismarck saw that the (Seven Weeks) war had 
strengthened Prussian territory by such vast additions from the 
northern and middle states that Austria could never again claim 
supremacy in Germany; but he also saw looming up in the imme- 
diate future something which his opponents did not see,- — a great 
war with France. He foresaw that France, duped, enraged, all her 
calculation brought to naught, would never, without a savage 
struggle, permit the establishment on her boundaries of a united 
Germany." 

"Napoleon III was not allowed by the French nation to forget 
the glories of the First Empire. If the sway of France could not 
be extended throughout the valley of the Rhine, it might at least 
prevail over portions of southern Germany, Belgium, and the Neth- 
erlands." "Despite the fact that the French government, the 
Chambers, the people, had been amply informed from the most 
trustworthy sources that their army was utterly unprepared, they 
insisted on demands which could only lead immediately to war. 
Driven on by this tempest, the Duke de Gramont telegraphed addi- 
tional orders to Benedetti. He must secure from King William not 
only the young prince's renunciation but a declaration that no 
Hohenzollern would ever again, under any circumstances, become 
a candidate for the Spanish throne. Every day from the 6th to the 
13 th of July Gramont was plying him with telegraphic orders to 
press the king harder and get more distinct assurances, in fact, to 
get evidences for the Paris mob that the king had been humiliated." 
"Prussia, and indeed all Germany, showed a determination more 
sober but quite as sincere. On July 19th the French declaration 
of war was received at Berlin." "Bismarck shrewdly guided opinion 
at home towards war and in the interest of neutrality." He ere long 
revealed to Europe, through the London Times and other agencies 
the previous French proposals, to annex to France, in time of peace, 
territories belonging to Belgium, the Netherlands and Southern Ger- 
many, and some of these proposals on French official paper and in 
the handwriting of Benedetti" (French ambassador at the Prussian 
Court) "he circulated widely in fac-simile." "In September Stras- 
burg capitulated and Bismarck saw realized his great dream of 
recovering Alsace and its historic capital. In all these Bismarck cir- 
culars there was an undertone of defiance which all foreign powers 
thought it best to heed. Bismarck's argument as regards the taking 
of Strasburg and Metz was that, "as there had been twenty-three 
unprovoked invasions of Germany from France, in days gone by, 
Germany was henceforth determined to keep the key of her two 
western doors in her own hands." To these views may be added 
extracts from the article on France in the Encyclopedia Brittannica, 
as follows: — 

21 



After Sadowa, "France realized with an angry surprise that on 
her eastern frontier had arisen a military power, by which her in- 
fluence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the name of 
the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been brought 
under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and aggressive, 
by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and threatening 
power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed the 
acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and Prussian arms; 
and that all this had been due to Napoleon" outwitted by Bismarck. 
"Napoleon Third's foreign policy was as contradictory as his policy 
in home affairs; 'The empire is peace' was his cry and he proceeded 
to make war." In 1870 "the empress Eugenie was credited with 
the remark, ' If there is no war, my son will never be emperor.' ' 
The prince was killed in the Zulu war; the empress lives, an exile 
in England. The treaty of Frankfurt, concluding the Franco-Prus- 
sian war, not only restored to Germany Alsace and a large part of 
Lorraine, including Strasburg and Metz, but exacted an indemnity 
of five thousand millions, which latter, transferred to Germany, 
started a tide of speculation, followed by a panic. The line then 
established between French and German Lorraine coincides in a 
general way with that established more than a thousand years before 
in the treaty of Verdun. It gave to Germany the powerful fortresses 
of Strasburg and Metz and left to France the powerful fortresses of 
Verdun and Belfort. While England and the United States were 
allowing their respective strongholds on the lakes to go to decay, 
these two countries of Europe have ever since been glaring at each 
other over their heavy guns. Perhaps it is not too much to say that 
the French nation as a whole has always considered the treaty of 
Frankfort, as Bolingbroke said of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, as 
"nothing more than a composition between the bully (Louis XIV) 
and the bullied," a treaty made in hopes to be broken. 

We have at last arrived at the final period, if it can be called 
final, in the age-long struggle for the valley of the Rhine. Forty- 
three years elapsed from the treaty of Frankfort to the beginning 
of the present war. It will be useful to follow the tourse of events 
in Germany and France between these dates so far as they shed any 
light on the "lost'\or the "restored" provinces, whichever one may 
see fit to call them. * The administration of the provinces by Prussia, 
through the king of Prussia, began with the voluntary exile of some 
50,000 inhabitants who preferred affiliation with France. The inci- 
dent naturally recalls the departure of the Pilgrims from their loved 
homes in England and Holland, rather than the forcible expatriation 
of the French from Arcadia or the Cherokees from Georgia./' Gold- 
smith has touched these strings of pity in "The Deserted Village," 
describing the effects of the wretched land system of Great Britain 
and Ireland: 

Have we not seen at Pleasure's lordly call 
The smiling long frequented village fall? 

22 



Beheld the duteous son, the site decayed, 
The modest matron and the blushing maid, 
Forced from their homes, a melancholy train, 
To traverse climes beyond the Western main? 

With such a number leaving the provinces of their own accord, it is 
safe to say that a much greater number would have been glad to 
leave or would be likely to stay in the provinces unreconciled to 
their new masters. 

The last word suggests the great mistake, the criminal blunder, 
which Germany has made in dealing with the provinces. The policy 
of mastery has too often prevailed over that of benevolent assimila- 
tion. /^The chip-on-the-shoulder, click-the heels manner of the mili- 
tary party has overcome the wiser counsels of the civilians, among 
whom may be reckoned Prince Hohenlohe of Bavaria, an early 
governor of Alsace-Lorraine, whose letters and policy in this matter 
may be found in his "Memoirs." To begin with, Alsace-Lorraine, 
instead of entering into the German empire like the other states, 
was, as it were, outlawed and made Reichsland, or imperial territory, 
and after the lapse of years is as yet nothing more. There has been, 
however, an enlargement of powers in legislation, over which the 
emperor has a veto, and besides the "Landesauschuss," a constitu- 
tional body with parliamentary privileges the territory has two 
members in the Bundesrat and fifteen members in the Reichstag. 
To what extent have the inhabitants become reconciled to the union 
with Germany? Whoever cares to investigate this question may 
consult two candid articles, one by an Englishman in the Contem- 
porary Review for July, 1894; the other by a Frenchman, Pierre 
de Coubertin, in the Fortnightly, reprinted in the Living Age of March 
23, 1907. The English writer, who seems to have been a newspaper 
correspondent in the war of 1870, devoted six months twenty-three 
years later, to a study of conditions and reports many facts and 
some conclusions. He draws a distinction between the feeling in the 
country districts and some of the large towns. "During the war of 
1870, speaking to a young Alsatian peasant and asking him how he 
felt with regard to a possible annexation to Germany, the reply was, 
'To us peasants it matters nothing whether we are French or Ger- 
man; in either case the powers that be will take care that we pay 
taxes enough' "and of the feeling a generation later, the investigator 
says concerning Alsace: "Speaking generally, the peasant is not dis- 
satisfied. He would like to pay fewer taxes and to escape military 
service; on the other hand, he recognizes that the present regime, if 
not gracious, is just and conscientious to a degree. It is also an ad- 
ministration of his own race and speech, and there is nothing very 
attractive in the prospect of being relegated to officials alien to him 
in race, who do not understand a word of his language, and who have 
always despised him for not understanding theirs. He sees that his 
material interests are being well looked after and that he is saving 

23 



money and adding at once to his possessions and comforts. All he 
desires is to be let severely alone, and the one thing he dreads is a 
war, which would practically end his well being, for which it would 
be no sort of compensation to find at its close that he had become, 
as his fathers were, a citizen of the French nation. In the great 
towns the feeling is somewhat different. In Strasburg, for instance, 
there is the Ligue Patriotique. The raison d'etre of this secret 
society is to restore Alsace to France, and it is animated by an 
uncompromising hatred to German rule" — Brief interviews are nar- 
rated, as, for example, " 'I was born a Frenchman; I have served 
in the French army; I should like to live and die a Frenchman. 
Apart from this I cannot say I have much to complain of, the law 
is just and the administration of it is fair and equal.' ' "There is a 
class among the younger men who say: 'It is true I was born under 
the French government, but I am not a Frenchman now. I was 
always a German by descent, and race, and language and I feel 
myself to be a German, not only politically, but also in feeling and 
sentiment.' " As to Lorraine: "What has been stated about the 
peasantry in Alsace, applies also in equal measure to the peasantry 
of Lorraine. They are gradually being Germanized. This does not 
apply to the nobility, gentry, and well-to-do classes in and around 
Metz." "During my visit to Metz I was out on my tricycle every 
morning at 6 p. m. when I met the workmen coming to their work, 
and must have conversed with hundreds of them. All under thirty 
spoke German perfectly. The old men and women still only speak 
French while they constantly assured me with pride, " 'I have a 
son at home who speaks German well.' ' "The habitual use of 
pure German is causing the Germanization of Lorraine to proceed 
more rapidly than that of Alsace." To these specific instances the 
writer adds, "I might multiply detail, but perhaps what has been 
given will sufficiently illustrate the views I have formed. The 
strong sentiment obtaining at this moment in Alsace-Lorraine seems 
to me closely analogous to the Jacobite sentiment which lingered in 
Scotland until the beginning of this nineteenth century. It was 
powerful as a sentiment long after it had ceased to be a motor in 
practical politics." In conclusion the writer condemns the "Reichs- 
land policy." What is a Reichsland? A land attached by military 
power to the empire, but otherwise unattached. The very name 
proclaims it to be a conquered country. This is just what should 
be forgotten as soon as possible." 

What has just been quoted will make more clear the following 
extract from the before mentioned article of Pierre de Coubertin, 
published seven years before the outbreak of the present war. "I 
think I may speak confidently of Alsace, because I know the country 
well and yet am not an Alsatian. It is said that Alsace has become 
detached from France, and that is true up to a certain point; people 
cannot remain for an indefinite length of time feeding upon their 
sorrows, especially in the case of such energetic and active people as 

24 



the Alsatians. They have accommodated themselves to the new 
situation, have recognized certain advantages in it, and have profited 
by them. They still continue to profess the greatest devotion to 
France; but I believe — and I say this flatly, for I am in the habit 
of expressing my opinions without troubling myself as to whether 
they are agreeable to one side or the other — I believe that if the 
proposal were made to Alsace today that she should sever herself 
from the German empire in order once more to become merely two 
French departments, it would be difficult to find a majority to 
sanction the step; although if, while attaching herself once more to 
the French republic, Alsace could still preserve her autonomy, the 
majority in favor of that course would be considerable." For a 
recent article, sympathetically French, on the general subject the 
reader may consult the Unpopular Review for April, 1918. 

Leaving Germany and the provinces, let us turn our eyes to 
France; in connection with which the salient facts during this 
period are the Franco-Russian alliance and the so-called revanche. 

During the war England had remained neutral, not a little 
critical of France; Italy was no longer drawn to her and at the 
close of the war she found herself decidedly isolated. She naturally 
turned to Russia, and the republic and the autocracy in the early 
90's contracted a morganatic marriage. Whether, in view of the 
recent Russian collapse and the immediate striking of Germany for 
France as Russia's ally at the outbreak of the present war, with all 
that this has entailed on Belgium and France, was a good thing to 
do, the historians of the future will discuss with more facts and 
less prejudice than we. Germany and , France had been each 
suspicious of the other's intentions; Russia wanted French loans 
and France, besides secretly or openly hoping that by. some turn of 
affairs Alsace-Lorraine might come back to her had never quite lost 
her love for la danse de Gloire to the music of Louis XIV and Na- 
poleon Bonaparte. Until the entente cordiale the relations between 
England and France had been strained because of the former's de- 
termination to control Egypt and her checking the moves of the 
latter in this direction. France now seems to have settled down to 
the inevitable in Egyptian affairs, albeit it has been said that even 
since Napoleon looked upon the pyramids France felt the land of 
the Pharaohs as some day to be her own. Revanche is the word 
generally used for that concentering of hopes on the restoration of 
Alsace-Lorraine to France which about every Frenchmen seems to 
entertain. The form of the word, to one whose native language is 
English, suggests the idea of vengeance but the French is not so 
strong. The noun is defined as "Action de rendre la pareille pour 
on mal qu'on a recu" and the verb as "Rendre la pareille en mal on 
en bien." In English, particularly in international affairs, it may 
be defined as a "recovery," "a return to the status quo ante" "a 
putting of things back as they were before." In this sense it was 
early used in France and figures in the present war; sometimes, 

25 



with the smart of wrongs, old or recent, not unnaturally connected 
with the idea of revenge. In the sense as defined, France has never 
lost sight of the revanche. There have, indeed, been forces operating 
in the other direction, notably the fellow-feeling of socialists like 
Juarez in all countries for each other. Surprising as it may seem, 
General Stoffel, a responsible actor in the war of 1870, himself an 
Alsatian, who felt that by its result France had lost what was to 
her more than mere territory, namely, her security, and been placed 
in a humiliating and intolerable position by the loss of fortresses, 
nevertheless advocated a friendly union of France and Germany, as 
an offset to the advance of Russia. " It is not necessary," says Stoffel, 
"to have meditated much on the state of Europe to perceive that 
the danger which threatens civilized nations is at the East, where it 
increases every day, slowly but surely. It can be affirmed that, 
thanks to the divisions which disintegrate nations, Russia will some 
day or other become mistress of the provinces of the Danube. When 
that day comes, she will encircle Europe from the Baltic to the 
Archipelago, protected on her two flanks by those two seas, in a 
position which nobody will be able to turn or attack from behind. 
Having there at her service the numerous sailors of the islands of 
the Archipelago, she will spread gradually, like a grease spot, and 
will soon obtain the coasts of the Adriatic and Trieste. When she 
has at her head a conquering Czar, how will the Occidental people, 
if they are still disunited, resist the formidable pressure of the Slavic 
race? It will be a war of civilization against barbarism, and the 
moment may then come when will be accomplished for Europe the 
prophecy of Napoleon at St. Helena, 'Republican or Cossack.' ' 

During the period succeeding the treaty of Frankfurt divers 
reprehensible things were done by divers European governments. 
Germany seized Kiaochou and kept it until dislodged in 1914. 
Italy jumped on Abyssinia, for reasons perhaps not explainable to 
her own conscience and was defeated by a brave adversary. Austria, 
taking advantage of a delicate situation in Europe, took to herself 
Bosnia and Herzgovina, over which she had a protectorate by the 
treaty of Berlin. It was not like larceny; it was worse, — embezzle- 
ment by a trusted fiduciary. Turkey slaughtered Armenians and 
Belgium allowed a wicked king to persist in killing and enslaving on 
his private estate in the Congo, until his people became ashamed 
in face of the world's protest. France, the new republic, forgetting 
that true democracy is Christianity on its political side, merely for 
conquest and gain, destroyed the independence of Madagascar, then 
well on the way to an ordered government, and advancing in civiliza- 
tion. Needless to say that France cannot come before the world 
with clean hands asking for Alsace-Lorraine until she has put Mada- 
gascar in the way of independence. Great Britain successfully fought 
the Boer republics and in the midst of war Victoria, of blessed 
memory, went in sorrow to her grave. Concerning this war which 
substituted for a republican an aristocratic-monarchical form and to 

26 



a certain extent nullified the suffrage, the opinions of the bulk of the 
liberal party were much like that of the rest of the world. It was 
expressed in these terms by a prominent Indian, educated in and 
having much affection for England: "In my opinion those who have 
read Sir Edward Clarke's speeches, Mr. Frederick Harrison's open 
letter to Lord Salisbury, Mr. John Morley's speeches, etc., cannot 
but come to the conclusion other than that this war is one of the 
most cruel, unjust and inhuman wars. It is difficult to believe that 
a country like England, the nursery of freedom and independence, 
should wage it against a people so weak and insignificant as the 
Boers. Say whatever Lord Salisbury and his associates may, it is 
clear that gold fields and diamonds are the cause. Is this the fruit 
of civilization?" One more example. The ancient empire of Persia, 
tottering towards decline, had a chance of renewal of strength and 
an able American lawyer undertook the rehabilitation of the finances. 
This would never do; other plans had already been considered and 
the Persian saw, or thought he saw, two beasts of prey approaching, 
one from the north and another from the south, eager to divide the 
political carcass of the historic empire, leaving just a little between 
for manners. The American was given leave to withdraw, for the 
Bear and the Lion, each fearsome of the other, had become partners 
in the enterprise. 

The Cossack fear has counted for much in the mental state and 
attitude of certain peoples and explains something of what would 
otherwise be obscure. France has had it; Germany has had it; 
England has had it, as touching her eastern empire and highways 
thereto. Sir Alfred Lyall, in his life of the Marquis of Dufferin and 
Ava, makes the bald statement: "Just as a fortress or a line of en- 
trenchments requires an open space around or in front of it, so it is 
manifestly advantageous for the security of a kingdom to be sur- 
rounded by a ring of territories with which powerful neighbors must 
not meddle. Upon this principle we place the adjoining states under 
our protectorate, whether they desire it or do not; and thus our 
political influence radiates out beyond the line of our actual posses- 
sion, spreading its skirts widely and loosely over the lands adjacent. 
From the time when the British dominion was first established in 
India, the prosecution of this policy has been one leading motive of 
wars, annexations, and alliances. The same policy had been prac- 
tised by the Romans, and with similar results." Lord Dufferin him- 
self did not share in the fear and wrote: "I am one of those who do 
not believe that Russia will actually invade India during the present 
(nineteenth) century, unless, indeed, she should produce a hero with 
the genius and ambition of Napoleon or Alexander and even then I 
think she would come to grief." f When viceroy of India he sub- 

t It is with regret that the name of the first Marquis of Dufferin and Ava is here men- 
tioned in connection with a policy that professes to contain no more of Christianity than that 
of ancient Rome; this for the personal reason that a chance acquaintance in a college hall 
(Lady Dufferin's Canadian Journal, page 206) led in the years following to various courtesies 
from one who was the embodiment of the highest courtesy and culture and became the peerage 
because he was one of nature's noblemen. 

27 



dued and annexed Burmah, believing this course to be better for 
both countries and it should be said that Burmah and Madagascar 
are not parallel cases. 

The foregoing instances of international transgression are rele- 
vant as showing the temper of the peoples, the great difficulty as 
well as the still greater necessity of discovering some basis for peace 
that is radically new and which may be effective. This historic re- 
view may be concluded by an extract from an article in the Atlantic 
Monthly of February, 191 8, from the pen of Daniel Blumenthal, at 
the opening of the present war the Mayor of Colmar in Alsace, 
which quotation may serve also as an introduction to the argument 
in summary for the possession of Alsace-Lorraine by France, to be 
followed by a like summary of the argument presented by Germany. 

The inhabitants "were torn from their land, to be incorporated 
by force in a detested enemy state, whose autocratic government 
was the essential condition of prosperity in its militaristic policy. 
And even then they were not to enjoy the rights, — albeit closely 
restricted, — of German subjects. They were placed under an ex- 
ceptional regime; instead of being German citizens, or, at least, 
German subjects, they became mere objects of domination. That is 
why Germany was destined to fail lamentably in all her efforts to 
amalgamate Alsace-Lorraine with Germany; the gulf between the 
native population became wider and wider; and we may say that 
the new generation was more bitterly opposed to the new masters 
than the generation of 1871 had been. Finally there came the 
Zabern affair, which covered Germany with ridicule. Every one 
knows that extraordinary story, which resulted in the replacement 
of the entire government of Alsace-Lorraine by Prussians utterly 
devoid of any spirit of fair dealing towards the oppressed people of 
the Reichsland." 

The reasons following might be urged by a Frenchman for the 
reunion with Alsace-Lorraine, and others might perhaps be found. 

1. The provinces were taken from France by force less than 
50 years ago and France has never voluntarily acquiesced. 

2. At the time of the taking they were essentially French; so 
far as the character of the population has changed it is the product 
of the original wrong. The numbers of unwelcome German officials 
may be compared to the carpet-baggers who overran the South 
after the civil war in the United States. 

3. If it be admitted that lapse of time may or ought to bar 
recovery of territory unjustifiably appropriated, sufficient time has 
not yet elapsed to prevent a restoration to the original status. 

4. The provinces have been misgoverned. Good government 
might condone the original wrong but the absurdity in this case is 
apparent. To be exact their return is no more than a fair mulct for 
the great German crime of today. 

5. Conquered territory, unless rebellious, has a right to be united 
to the new sovereignty in the same manner as its other territory is 

28 



united. The provinces, should never have been, or least, at this late 
day, should not be Reichsland. 

6. The defeat of France in 1870 was by Germany led by Prussia, 
not by Prussia, and the annexation to Prussia more removed in 
spirit from the spirit of the provinces than is Germany as a whole, 
is a wrong to be righted by the provinces returning to France. 

7. If a fair vote were taken Alsace-Lorraine would be found 
desirous of returning to France. 

8. Since the dastardly outrage on Belgium, when Germany 
played the sneak, she has forfeited in any conference of nations, the 
right to govern any territory, whose possession is a question of fair 
debate. To say the least, Germany is afflicted with moral insanity, 
and is more in need of a guardian than entitled to a wardship. 

9. The Rhine is the natural eastern frontier of France. Without 
it she is insecure. 

10. The treaty of Frankfurt was made under duress; not a 
treaty but a forced peace. It never had and can never acquire a 
binding force, except the unjust force of arms. 

The reasons following might be given by a German for the re- 
tention of the provinces and others might perhaps be found. 

1. Louis XIV wantonly robbed Germany of Alsace-Lorraine. 
He took advantage of a time when Germany was so weakened inter- 
nally as to be incapable of resistance and he therefore played the 
bully. He represented France and France gladly accepted and en- 
joyed the stolen goods; at least she is a willing accessory after the 
fact. 

2. The lapse of time did not destroy the right of recovery. No 
essential principle can be found to create in this way a difference 
between 50 years and 200 years. There is no statute, of limitations 
in international law. 

3. If in a conference of nations the case of Alsace-Lorraine 
should be reopened it would allow the reopening of similar cases 
occurring since 1870, in which territory has passed unwillingly to 
the predominant nation as the result of a war, whether the question 
is raised by the nation suffering the loss or by the transferred and 
would-be self-determinant population. The question can again be 
raised concerning Bosnia, Herzgovina, the subjected Boer republics, 
the Philippines, Cuba, Porto Rico, and Cyprus. 

4. The principle of stare decisis (the decision to stand) is em- 
bodied in the common law and the law of nations in the interest of 
peace; it does not assume that the previous decision was right, 
but not to recognize such a principle would be to admit of every 
decision being upset as soon as made and lead to perpetual litigation 
and trouble. In international law the result would be to perpetuate 
hatred and war, embarrass trade and discourage the arts of peace not 
only in and between the nations immediately affected but those 
connected with them by sympathy, commerce, race, or political 
alliance. Upon the principle of stare decicis (the last decision con- 

29 



trols), the sovereign power can alter the rule but cannot make it 
retroactive. There is no sovereign power as among and above the 
nations. 

5. The annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was the natural result of 
the Franco-Prussian War. Although Germany desired this war it 
was because of the previous humiliations and open or covert threats 
of France as of a supposedly superior power and prestige. Not to 
settle the ability of Germany to cope with France, when united, was 
to allow of an irritating state of things, that would leave a disunited 
Germany at the mercy of France at some inopportune time when 
the designs of Napoleon III or his successors upon southern Ger- 
many and the lower Rhine would be likely to succeed. It is better 
to lance a sore than to allow it to fester. The acts of Napoleon 
III were purposely calculated to insult the king of Prussia and pro- 
voke a war. These acts were enthusiastically ratified by the French 
people in the Chamber of Deputies. Having willingly entered a 
war, and even been eager to bring it about, it is not manly but mean 
not to accept the consequences, especially when they concern terri- 
tory that for ages belonged to the successful power which was 
robbed of it in an hour of weakness by its quarrelsome adversary. 
Sedan was but the natural and necessary consequence of Magenta, 
fought by France for purely selfish reasons and paid for by Italy in 
the annexation of Nice and Savoy. 

6. An occupation obtained by aggression (of Louis XIV), al- 
though continued for two centuries, should not offset an occupation 
of more than a thousand years, confirmed by general consent both 
then and after the treaties of Verdun and Mersen, based on the wise 
statesmanship of Charlemagne who ruled in the interest and for the 
benefit of all Europe and united both the Latin and Teutonic coun- 
tries in his domain to the satisfaction and happiness of all. The 
Teutonic occupation in the middle ages must be reckoned original 
because there is now no sovereignty in being to claim the benefit 
of an earlier occupation. 

7. If regard be had to the population of the annexed territory, 
separately from the sovereignty to which they are lost, it may be 
said that those who cared more for the political affiliation with 
France than their native soil voluntarily removed themselves soon 
after 1870. If German settlers, other than the military, have come 
from across the Rhine, they have come innocently and have a right 
to be counted in the expression of the popular wish. To turn over 
a people from their German to a French sovereignty would not heal 
the sore but change the physician who was in charge of it. If Alsace- 
Lorraine wishes to unite with France it is pertinent to inquire whether 
Cyprus wishes to unite with Greece, the Egyptians to the Sultan, 
India return to her former state, Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark, Mad- 
agascar to recover her independence, and the Dutch of South Africa 
to ally themselves with democracy either in the form of the original 
republics or sending representatives to sit in Westminster Hall. 

30 



8. The river Rhine is not the natural boundary between Ger- 
many and France. For no great length of time in two thousand years 
has it been the actual boundary. For reasons, obvious, especially 
when we consider events on the Rio Grande, the history of India 
and the annexation of Burmah, a mountain chain is the best possible 
barrier between two nations in rivalry or not in mutual confidence. 
The valley of the Rhine, like the valley of the Elbe, the Mississippi, 
the Loire, (and the writer would add, although no German just now 
would admit, the Adige,) should be treated so far as possible as a 
unit, in the interests of agriculture and trade, and sometimes of race 
and religion. 

9. Notwithstanding French occupation, Alsace-Lorraine are in 
great part the creation of the Teutonic mind. In Alsace the language 
is to a great extent German inherited by the inhabitants as they were 
in 1870. The cathedral of Strasburg in the work of Erwin Von 
Steinbach and no German on the Rhine's east bank could without 
humiliation see it in other than German hands. Parts of Lorraine 
are of pristine Teutonic stamp and indicate a wish to acknowledge 
the original matrix. 

10. In the Alsace-Lorraine question each side considers itself 
in the right and the question touches both very deeply in national 
honor and individual conscience. In such a case the burden of proof 
and the risk is on the party who would alter an existing situation. 

11. It is true that the government of the Reichsland has not 
always been in accordance with the more conciliatory wishes of the 
civilian party, but it is to be remembered that the law is justly ad- 
ministered and that it takes time to win the confidence of an an- 
nexed people. England effected the conquest of Ireland centuries 
ago but her government of that country still blots the page of history. 
Her present allies do not expect her to change the sovereignty but 
to settle the question and have already given her more than two 
hundred years to do it. Till it is done the peace of the world will 
be disturbed. Meanwhile her cobelligerants are paying for it by 
a larger contribution of men in the present war than would oth- 
erwise be required. 

The reasons set forth for Germany happen to be more than 
those set forth for France but one strong argument can outweigh 

\many others. 
v, Such are the historic facts, such the arguments, which have to 
Ho with the vexed question of Alsace-Lorraine. It is not intended 
here to propose a solution. After two millenniums of dispute and 
struggle it begins to look as if the problem were insoluble on any 
principles hitherto adopted in the adjustment of such affairs between 
nations. Superiority of power was Rome's way: but the rival may 
later obtain the superiority. The balance of power, a principle 
brought forward by William III of England, has served a purpose 
for Europe but would inevitably break down in the greater compli- 
cation of the modern world, the whole of which must now be taken 

31 



into account. The fact that European nations have been almost 
exclusively controlled each by its own personal interests, is suffi- 
ciently plain upon the face of history. While it cannot be denied 
that the United States has a direct and imperative personal interest 
in the winning of this war, from the point of view of its rights on the 
seas, the fear of a military domination of the world and, particularly, 
its obligations to the republics south of us, based on the Monroe 
doctrine, yet we have certain benevolent and altruistic purposes 
which are hard to be realized by the self-centered governments of 
Europe. "One of the most difficult things I have attempted," says 
President Wilson in a letter to Dr. Jowett, "is to convince foreign 
ministers and foreign peoples that the purposes and ideals of the 
people of the United States are, indeed, unselfish and altruistic." 

As to the present war, while it is undeniable that Germany 
started the blaze, yet an analysis of contributing causes brings out 
strongly the element of personal interest in other nations. The 
editors of the New International Encyclopedia (American) state the 
following forces as most directly contributory: 

1. The clashing of national interests and ideals. 

2. The maintenance of a system of military alliances. 

3. The economic rivalry among the nations of Europe. 

All this is self-centered to the last degree, "the failure of Chris- 
tianity" in international law for the simple reason that it has not 
been tried, a state of things almost below the age of chivalry. As 
far removed as possible from this is a system, international in char- 
acter, which takes account, not of might but of right, of power only 
as a means of enforcing the right; which recognizes the solidarity of 
nations as members of a brotherhood, the gradual enlightenment 
and correspondent increase of responsibility in the people of the 
separate states, and wouid transpose the motto Vox Populi, Vox 
Dei, to Vox Dei, Vox Populi, The voice of God should be the voice 
of the people. Friendship, as the president has said, and, it may be 
added, the mutual confidence upon which true friendship rests, is 
the normal ground of international relations. It is this state of 
feeling between Great Britain and the United States that has made 
the Great Lakes free from battleship and fortress for a century. 

Through all the clouds unrimmed as yet by light can we antici- 
pate the dawn of a better day? There is one significant fact. In 
the latter part of the nineteenth century the Columbia of the North, 
under wise counsels and relegating mere power to its proper place, 
took the moral leadership of the world in the adjustment of interna- 
tional difficulties and has held it until now. The hard and foolish 
policy once pursued with the Indian tribes, isolated nations as they 
have always been considered, was reversed; the complications with 
China growing out of the boxer uprising were, thanks to this gov- 
ernment, put upon a high moral plane in settlement and even the 
boxer fine repaid to the Chinese government. In fulfilling our obli- 
gation to our Southern neighbors, we crushed oppression in Cuba, 

32 



held the island a short time for its own sake and then returned it to 
the Cubans. By the hap of war the Philippines fell into our hands, 
but independence is promised and in wise and kindly fashion by 
education and the establishment of orderly government, the way is 
being prepared for it. The present administration has, to say the 
least, tried to be just and even gallant to Mexico and this perhaps 
at the expense of financial interests, which, of course, should not for 
a moment be allowed to stand in the way of a generous policy. The 
sympathy of this people for Belgium and their sense of its deep 
wrongs have furnished a moral background for our entrance into 
the war primarily in defense of our sacred rights. From the first 
the enlistment of Americans in British and French armies has sug- 
gested the youthful and pure consecration to liberty which animated 
our beloved Lafayette. It should be said that this advance of our 
foreign relations to a higher moral plane has been seconded by Bri- 
tain in the considerateness shown in the Alabama claims and the 
attitude of Lord Salisbury's government in the Venezuela episode; 
also in the fisheries disputes. As matter of blood and money it 
would not be worth the while of the Americas, both north and 
south of the equator, to meddle with a question so local as Alsace- 
Lorraine, except as it may be intermingled with other matters hav- 
ing immediately to do with a peace settled upon a foundation radi- 
cally new, and in establishing which all -the powers of Europe might 
possibly be called to sacrifice territory in some part of the world in 
the interest of the self-determination of peoples. 

Comparatively, Alsace-Lorraine is nothing; the kind of peace 
desired, in which militarism becomes a thing of the past, is every- 
thing. Notwithstanding the difficulties and the apparent remoteness 
of the end desired, this, of all times affords a great opportunity for 
making a serious effort to bring it to pass. Organizations already 
exist for this purpose. For such an end, with others, the church 
exists, and has existed from before the days of the truce of God. 
The danger is that at last the warring peoples will sink back ex- 
hausted, satisfied with the restfulness of peace, and too inert to 
engage in the constructive work necessary to secure the future. An 
increase of activity is necessary among all the forces for good in all 
countries, Asia not excepted. In the last analysis it is a question of 
righteousness and the law of love; of ideals prevailing among the 
people at large rather than the policy of their rulers for the time 
being. There is no force, said Napoleon, equal to the force of public 
opinion. The fountain cannot rise higher than its source in the 
sovereign people. 

The path to a lasting peace lies through radical changes in the 
temper of men; through suffering; through sacrifice. It is only 
seen through the strained and clear vision of the eye that seeks the 
light. Lincoln was never braver than when he plainly told the 
American people, North and South, that slavery, connived at and 
supported by both, was the cause of the existing war, which might, 

33 



as he said in the second inaugural, continue "until every drop of 
blood drawn with the lash should be paid for with another drawn by 
the sword." Let us say then, for our era, that such sacrifices are at 
hand and already begun, and the sacrifices of blood and treasure 
are not all; that as nations rise higher in their standards of life, a 
peace based upon friendship, mutual confidence and the law of love 
becomes more attainable. In other words the standards must be 
raised. Let us say, for example, that, leaving the sufferings of war 
to do their work, the people of the United States must steel them- 
selves against the wanton luxury and materialism which are the 
temptations of wealth, and generously give to educational, religious, 
and missionary effort in their own and less favored lands; that 
Germany must abandon her seemingly inbred brutality; that the 
men of Italy must attain a deeper religious consciousness; that 
Britain must dethrone the beer-god and France purge herself of 
atheism and licensed lust. All these are but indicative of an ad- 
vancing stage when education, morality and religion itself shall have 
more and more to do with with the affairs of individuals and nations. 
The end desired, although scarcely discerned except with the 
eye of faith, viewed in the light of the past is not impossible. It 
should be remembered that the purity and lasting influence of the 
Judaic religion was a creation in measured time, as was the perfect- 
ing of Greek culture, the remarkable fabric of Roman law and the free 
institutions of the British commonwealth. Even in a generation 
after the Civil war the attitude of the South toward slavery changed 
from approval to condemnation, and the German people have been 
wrought over and cast in harder mold within the lifetime of their 
reigning Csesar. Whatever may be said, and with truth, of heroic 
qualities brought out by war, upon which German militarism lays 
so much stress, the evangel of the angels continues to be, "Peace 
on earth," and it was in lands then, as now, sounding with the 
tramp of armies that the prophet wrote: "They shall beat their 
swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they 
learn war any more. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the 
leopard shall lie down with the kid; they shall not hurt nor destroy 
in all my holy mountain." 



34 



PEACE 

The establishment of an organization of peace which shall 
make it certain that the combined power of free nations will 
check every invasion of right and serve to make peace and 
justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of 
opinion, to which all must submit and by which every inter- 
national readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon 
by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned. 
— President Wilson, 

At Washington's Tomb, July 4, 1918. 



Were half the fTDwer that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, 
Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals or forts. 

■ 
***** 

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals 
The blast of war's great organ shakes the skies, 
But beautiful as songs of the immortals 
The holy melodies of love arise. 

— Longfellow: from "The Arsenal at Springfield." 




LIBRARY OF CON0>Htbb« 



027 575 075 A 



